The national health ministry has approved a multimillion-dollar package to provide free abortions to all women aged 20 to 33, regardless of the circumstances.

JERUSALEM — Since Jan. 1, the "health basket" of medications and services covered by Israel’s universal health-care system has included free abortions to all women aged 20 to 33, regardless of the circumstances.

Until now, government-funded abortions have been reserved for women under 19 or over 40 and in cases where the unborn child has a severe defect, the mother’s life is endangered or the pregnancy is a result of sexual abuse. In other cases — for example, if a woman believes the pregnancy will cause her harm, physically or emotionally — she has had to pay for the procedure herself.

Up to 6,300 women who could not otherwise afford an abortion will be able to do so now, due to the $4.6 million earmarked by the Health Ministry committee that determines what will and won’t be covered by the country’s government-subsidized health funds, according to Dr. Jonathan Halevy, director of the committee.

The health funds resemble HMOs in their operation.

Halevy added that no one knows how many of these women would have paid for the abortions themselves, were the funding unavailable.

Abortion-rights supporters say the expanded coverage will enable all Israeli women to realize their rights under Israel’s abortion legislation. Opponents wonder how a nation that prides itself on being the locus of Christianity, Judaism and Islam suddenly decided to fund thousands more abortions when the rate of abortions here has been declining steadily for a quarter century.

Sandy Shoshani, national director of Be’ad Chaim, a Messianic Jewish organization that provides help to women of all religions contemplating abortion, said the government was able to earmark funding because Israel’s coalition government "is currently mostly composed of secular parties." Without the usual ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties in the government, she said, "this was a window for them to push this legislation through."

According to the Ministry of Health’s latest (2012) statistics, the number of abortions fell 21% from 1990 to 2012, from 150 for every 1,000 live births to 117.

In 2013, almost 20,000 Israeli women received permission to abort from "hospital termination committees," according to Efrat, an organization that helps pregnant Jewish women choose to give birth, rather than abort their babies, by assisting them financially.

Moshe Halbertal, a professor of philosophy at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, emphasized that Israel, despite having more holy sites, churches, synagogues and mosques than perhaps any other country, is governed almost entirely by civil law.

"The only area in which the law grants Jewish law a monopoly is over issues related to marriage and divorce" and other things related to Jewish practice, Halbertal said. Israeli law also empowers Christians, Muslims, Druze and other minorities to conduct their own marriages and other religious ceremonies. There is no civil marriage in Israel.

Israel, Halbertal said, is a democracy first, "and a majority of the general public has a strong pro-choice tendency."

Nonetheless, Israel’s abortion regulations are influenced by religious law, said Halbertal. But Jewish law — the guiding religious force in Israel, which was created as a haven for Jews three years after the end of the Holocaust — "is more lenient than other religious traditions, which is why the religious parties are hesitant to turn it into a struggle with secular lawmakers," he said.

In Israel, Halbertal explained, "every person decides for his or herself how to act according to their own values. While it doesn’t force any woman to get an abortion, it doesn’t prevent her from having one either."

Issues of concern to Catholics, such as embryonic stem-cell research, "aren’t prohibited by Jewish law because they could potentially save a life," Halbertal noted. "Judaism does not hold that conception is the beginning of life."

Some Israeli rabbis have come out against the government’s new abortion-funding guidelines. Rabbi David Stav, the head of Tzohar, a modern-Orthodox rabbinical organization, told the Arutz Sheva media outlet that it is "immoral" for the state to fund abortions that result from a mother’s "personal decisions" rather than serious medical problems or sexual abuse.

"The state [will be] allocating resources for personal decisions," something that is "forbidden by Jewish law," Stav said.

The Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem, which represents the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, has been less openly vocal on the issue, perhaps because its views on abortion are well known and also due to the delicate relations it has with Israeli authorities.

Asked to comment on the government funding of abortions, Archbishop William Shomali, the auxiliary bishop and patriarchal vicar for Palestine, told the Register, "According to the Bible, any killing is against God. Abortion is killing. Life starts from the first moment of conception, and, for us, abortion is killing. I can’t say anything more."

Feminist groups have no problem if a woman who wants to keep her baby receives assistance, but they insist that the government must pay for all abortions on an equal basis.

Ronit Piso, coordinator of the Women and Medical Technologies project run by the Isha L’Isha Feminist Center in Haifa, said that, despite Israel’s global designation as the Holy Land, "for us, this is the place where we live and where everyone can express their beliefs. We believe every woman and man has the right to their bodies and preferences and that funding in our society should express these values."

Ruth Tidhar, who heads the assistance department of Efrat, the pregnancy-support group, said her organization doesn’t try to persuade women with arguments related to religion.

"We’re a Jewish organization, but not a religious one," Tidhar explained. For the most part, she said, pregnant women — religious, secular and in between — are considering an abortion "for financial or emotional reasons," and bringing up religious issues doesn’t dissuade them from terminating.

Although the pregnancy-support organization, which was founded by a Holocaust survivor dedicated to repopulating the Jewish people after 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, is not overtly religious, "we are doing holy work," Tidhar said. "Efrat has saved over 56,000 babies."

She believes the financial assistance Efrat provides, along with the organization’s outreach and education campaign throughout Israel, is the main reason the number of abortions has decreased.

In contrast, Shoshani, national director of Be’ad Chaim, said her Jerusalem-based organization is founded on religious principles.

"We’re Bible-based. We believe that every person is created in the image of God," she said.

The organization, which is funded mainly by Christians and Messianic Jews from outside Israel, helps Christian and Muslim Arab women, North-African refugees and non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, among others.

Be’ad Chaim provides a crib, stroller, baby bath and a 300 shekel ($85) monthly gift certificate for baby items. Shoshani said this has helped to save more than 860 babies.

Comments

“How sad…a people who were sacrificed during World War II marking the killing of 6 million people of the Jewish faith. Now, they are engaging in their own holocaust.” Yes, a holocaust that is not as visible or expensive as Gestapo arrests, transport trains, gas chambers and smelly chimneys. Another nation that disdains God seems bent on destroying itself. But there is a remnant there - which we must spiritually support in their determination to keep God’s memory from being eradicated from the land.

Posted by Lillian Porter on Monday, Feb 3, 2014 9:16 AM (EDT):

Daniel,
Like the U.S. Israel’s media has probably played a dominant role in proliferating the pro-choice zeitgeist through promoting women’s “empowerment” and sexual license, while suppressing truth about pathologies associated with abortion and contraception. America has, in fact, snuffed close to 57 million lives by abortion. That is while, like Africa, there are only 85 people per square mile. (Britain has 1010 people per square mile and a total population of 62 million). America, with China, N. Korea and Canada does the most late term abortions and permits gendercide.

Posted by Lillian Porter on Monday, Feb 3, 2014 9:02 AM (EDT):

When I was a student nurse in 1969, me and my peers were excited that Golda Meir became Prime Minister of Israel and Indira Ghandi the leader of India. During our nightly discussions this was a frequent theme: “When women rule the world there will be LESS bloodshed”. How diabolically untrue. In Israel, Ethiopian women have deceptively been administered Depo Provera. In India, there are mass sterilization camps, baby girls are forcibly aborted and heinous abuse of women continues. In China, like India, there is also a preference for males, which has caused a severe gender imbalance. Women, and their extended families, are terrorized by agents of the State who extort money for any pregnancy that occurs without State permission. If you read the online publications from some of these countries, you will see that the official views do not differ from that of the U.S. and the U.N.

How sad…a people who were sacrificed during World War II marking the killing of 6 million people of the Jewish faith. Now, they are engaging in their own holocaust.

Posted by Esther Davis on Thursday, Jan 30, 2014 12:30 AM (EDT):

Et tu, Israel? May “40 Days for Life” come to your rescue. God help you, Israel.

Posted by Ashley on Wednesday, Jan 29, 2014 8:03 PM (EDT):

“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you” (Jeremiah 1:5)
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (Psalm 139:13-14).
A sad day for Israel!

Posted by JD on Wednesday, Jan 29, 2014 7:36 PM (EDT):

“According to the Ministry of Health’s latest (2012) statistics, the number of abortions fell 21% from 1990 to 2012, from 150 for every 1,000 live births to 117.” Ah, yes. I understand. Abortions are falling, so something had to be done to prop up the number. Hitler and the Israeli Nazi Party (after reading about this initiative, there must be such a party) must be jumping for joy. Israelis have finally decided to do Hitler’s job themselves?!?!?!?!

This whole abortion institution is outrageous.

Posted by Russell weber III on Wednesday, Jan 29, 2014 7:24 PM (EDT):

70% of the jewish inhabitants of the Holy Land are completely secular, none of them have the Christ given right to be there. Christendom must reconquer the Holy Land from the infidel moslem and jew. it is an offense in the eyes of Christ to let what has happened to the Catholics living there. And why has both moslem and jew banned the writings of Edward Said, a Catholic Arab who was born in Jerusalem, a Palestinian.

Posted by Donald Link on Wednesday, Jan 29, 2014 7:11 PM (EDT):

Ex the religious argument, I believe the correct term for such a small nation surrounded by enemies is national suicide. God help them; they are certainly not helping themselves.

Posted by Richard Moorton on Wednesday, Jan 29, 2014 5:44 PM (EDT):

I find this horrifying. I have through the years been a friend to Israel, if not always agreeing with her actions and policies. This news ends my support for the “Jewish” state, if not for Judaism. A state with a policy so evil is worthy of neither support nor survival.

I’m not enchanted with my own country, the US, either, on the same principle. I do not wish evil for Israel or the US, but if it comes, when you sow the wind you reap the whirlwind.

Suggest that our Israelite brothers and sisters who support abortion, and all others who believe in like manner, read Leviticus 18:21 and Leviticus 20:1-5. God could not have been any more clear!

Posted by Katherine on Wednesday, Jan 29, 2014 2:14 PM (EDT):

Rachel continues to weep, but this is worse, the mother is the murderer instead of Herod. So very sad.

Posted by poetcomic1 on Wednesday, Jan 29, 2014 1:32 PM (EDT):

God says to Israel:
“Will a mother forget her suckling child? For pity, the son of her womb? Yes! Even these may forget, but I, I will not forget thee.”
- Isaiah

Posted by Daniel Lamish on Wednesday, Jan 29, 2014 1:07 PM (EDT):

Around 8 to 9 years ago, B’nai B’rith took a survey of Jews in the United Stated. That survey (which was quickly buried) found that approximately 90 percent of Jewish women in the US were pro-choice. It is of no surprise whatsoever that Israel’s health care system would make this move. And guess what? The US won’t be far behind.

Posted by Suzanne Nielsen on Wednesday, Jan 29, 2014 11:10 AM (EDT):

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you were unwilling! Behold,your house will be abandoned, desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of The Lord.’..........How sad this makes me feel.

Posted by Tom in AZ on Wednesday, Jan 29, 2014 10:20 AM (EDT):

@Don L: The State of Israel has been, since it’s re-founding in the late 1940s, the state of the Tribe of Judah, not of the Law of Moses. Israeli law is based on secular pragmatism, not on Jewish principle. Many observant Jews in Israel actually believe they should have nothing to do with politics; the Orthodox Jewish political parties represent a minority of the Orthodox. Some Orthodox Jews (mainly non-Hasidic Haredi Jews) consider the very existence of a Jewish state to be a mistake, since they believe Jewish national self-determination can only be restored by the Messianic Age.
-
Something similar to Israeli secularism happens here, with Indian tribes. The Navajo Nation does not actually reflect the values of Navajos—e.g., it was instrumental in getting the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act passed. They did it solely because it advanced their tribe’s political influence. Religious Navajos are forbidden from even LOOKING at corpses, they certainly didn’t want any of their people’s remains returned. The Nation joined a political coalition with some other tribes solely for secular pragmatic reasons.

Posted by Don L on Wednesday, Jan 29, 2014 9:45 AM (EDT):

So the very womb that gave forth birth to our Catholic faith has now, as have we, decided to forsake God and de-sanctify the womb and motherhood itself in their quest to keep their faith a mere subject of their brand of secularism. Will they soon be expected to boo God at their political meetings?

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